Shelving is used extensively for stocking and storing products or merchandise in numerous types of retail establishments, such as grocery stores and drug stores. Many stores simply employ shelves on which merchandise is stocked. In such stores, for the shelves which are not at eye level, it is difficult for the customer to see the items being displayed, if they are not located adjacent the front edge of the shelf. Therefore, it is desirable for merchandise to be displayed at the front of the shelf so that the customer can see the merchandise and be induced to purchase such merchandise. Also, such shelves make it difficult to rotate product, i.e., move the older stock to the front of the shelf and position newer stock behind the older stock. Rotating products is an important consideration if the goods are perishable or are subject to becoming stale.
Numerous forward feed devices have been proposed to automatically move an item forward on a shelf, as the item before it is removed. These devices generally fall into one of three categories. The first category includes inclined tracks, which rely on gravity to feed, slide or roll products forward. A second category employs conveyor belts, which still use gravity to effect forward movement. A third category, that has become popular in recent years, uses spring biased paddles in a pusher system to feed the product forward on a horizontally oriented shelf. Such pusher systems have been found useful in a variety of merchandising applications.
Forward feed devices are usually associated with divider walls. Normally, a divider wall is located on either side of a pusher mounted on a track (i.e., pusher system) so as to maintain the merchandise in rows. In certain designs, both the pusher system and the divider wall are mounted to at least a front rail, or front mounting member of the merchandising system, in order to allow a proper spacing of the pusher tracks and the divider walls on a shelf. In some known systems, the divider walls are separate from the pusher tracks. In others, the divider walls and pusher tracks are integrated into a one piece design. In either case, the divider walls and pusher tracks are, in some designs, slidably mounted on the front rail or mounting member. In other designs, one or both are fixedly mounted in relation to the front rail. In still other designs, both a front rail and a rear rail are employed and one or both of the pusher tracks and the divider walls are either fixedly secured to one or both of the front rail and the rear rail or slidably mounted thereon.
The purpose for employing a track with a pusher system is in order to the center the pusher behind the merchandise and to guide the pusher forward. However, such tracks are prone to be clogged with debris and then stick or malfunction. Perhaps more importantly, both the divider and the track are normally of a given size or length. Therefore, for shelves of varying depths, numerous different length dividers and tracks have to be provided.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art for a merchandising system which is able to readily accommodate shelves of varying depths.